Erin Johnson - January 2021
“My time at Surf Point was invaluable. The rhythm created by the view of the ocean, and architectural layout of the house itself, moved me and my work - gently, but with persistence.”
Erin Johnson's video installations blend documentary, experimental, and narrative filmmaking devices, and foreground the ways in which individual lives and sociopolitical realities merge. Comprised of footage of site-specific performances, the films explore how power structures are communicated through relationships, focusing on the complexity of collectivity, the wide-ranging consequences of scientific research, as well as resistance, desire, and the queer body. While at Surf Point, Erin filmed a new chapter of her ongoing video project surrounding Rachel Carson's letters to her friend and lover Dorothy Freeman. Set in Surf Point's building, the completed film will shift between the interior and exterior of the modernist duplex as it moves between the past and present, exploring the urgency and loss Carson felt in both her environmental research and romance. In addition, Erin edited and scored a new body of work for an installation in Times Square, and worked on the sound design for a piece shot in 2020.
More of Erin’s work can be found here.